If an AI started running in 2003 that has accumulated the knowledge of a 4-year old human and has the ability to continue learning at human or faster speeds, would we have noticed? Or would the reports we see about it sound too much like the reports of failed AIs for us to pay attention?
How old would a human child have to be to detect current spam nearly flawlessly (given lots of training)? To write spam that really does seem to be from your kids?
If Gmail accounts essentially stop getting spam, there’s a child AI is at Google*. If spam stops being largely non- or pseudo-sensical, a child AI lives in a botnet.
*Most likely AI host, or so some outside the Singularity Summit seemed to think; previous post on that event.
I know this is an old entry, but commenting anyway.
I’ve long maintained that spammers will develop AI before anyone else — they just have the most financial resources pointed at the problem.
As for anti-spam AI, you should use Akismet. ;)